Untranslatable? The Linguistic Knowledge Politics of Southern Urban Theory

Registration is now open for the "Untranslatable" workshop, organised by the University of Sheffield, Karachi Urban Lab/IBA Karachi, and Lund University.

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The workshop brings together contributions which reflect on the epistemic politics and practices of translation within Southern urban theory through a specific focus on words, language and concepts, as understood performatively rather than simply being representational. It forms part of the Urban Institute’s Urban Epistemics programme.

From interdisciplinary perspectives within and beyond urban studies, the papers contribute to our understandings of the process of translation, how well international terminologies of the ‘urban’ travel between places, the practices of translating place and context, and conversely, the translation of social practices. 

Through the papers we hope to pull out some of the grapples and tensions behind the practices of working across borders, concepts, life-worlds and languages, and how translation – or untranslatability – informs the epistemic politics of urban theory and practice. 

The initial line-up includes:

• Hesitation as care: Generative in-translation of commons in urban design pedagogies, Emre Akbil and Lara Sharf (University of Sheffield, UK)
• Untranslatable or untranslated? The ‘persistent epistemological preparation’ of translational geographies, Eleanor Chapman (Independent researcher and translator, Scotland, UK)
• Friction, citation, and the untranslatable: Relational translation as method for Southern Urban Theory, Esra Can (University of Sheffield, UK) and Jakleen Al-Dalal’a (UCL, UK) – Urban Commons Research Collective
• The interpretative zone of isiZulu language, Russel Hlongwane (African Centre for Cities researcher and cultural producer, University of Cape Town)
• Standing at al-aṭlāl: Untranslatability, memory, and the politics of belonging in Zarqa, Hala Ghanem, Abdallah Abolouz and Sarah Linn (tbc)
• Why do we still translate kampung as village and what might be the consequence? Farhan Anshary (University of Newcastle, UK)
• The untranslatable ecologies of Gangar Dhaar: Everyday hydrosocial relations along the River Hooghly in Kolkata, Raina Ghosh (Independent, Digital Empowerment Foundation, New Delhi, India)
• Nested territorialities, untranslatable terms: Micro-urbanism and the politics of spatial language in Indonesia, Dhimas Bayu Anindito (UCL, UK and Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)
• Pluriversality and ontological hegemony, Nipesh Palat Narayanan (Centre for Urbanisation, Culture and Society, INRS, Canada)
• Towards a theory of popular insurance, Irmelin Joelsson (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
• ‘More or less’ reconstruction: The liminal practices of Punarnirman in Nepal, Vanicka Arora (University of Stirling, UK)
• Translation as political struggle in urban south, Sumit Kumar (Shiv Nadar University, India)
• The politics of reappropriating apartheid in climate discourse and language, Charlotte Lemanski (University of Cambridge), Christina Culwick-Fatti and Fiona Anciano (University of the Western Cape)
• Lexicons of the urban struggle: behind the ‘slum’, Daniela Cocco Beltrame (University of Manchester) and Amelia Seabold (University of Oxford)
• Untranslatable activism: Activist urban design and methodological reflections on cross-linguistic comparative urban research, Juan Usubillaga Narvaez (Cardiff University, UK)
• ‘Higienização’ and ‘espoliação urbana’ in Brazil: The challenges of conceptual translation, Matthew Richmond (University of Newcastle, UK)
• Addressing linguistic knowledge politics through ch'ixi writing and differential authorship, Olivia Casagrande and Philipp Horn (University of Sheffield, UK)
• Urban omissions: Untranslated Concepts and Debates in Urban Studies, Lindsay Sawyer (Technical University of Munich), Ulises Moreno-Tabarez (SECIHTI-Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero), and Paroj Bannerjee (University College London)

A full timetable and book of extended abstracts will be shared soon.

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Rationale for the workshop

Southern urban theory is playing a critical role in challenging epistemic hierarchies and systems of domination that have favoured hegemonic ways of seeing and knowing the city.  To date, such work has focussed largely on challenging what is researched, how and with whom, bringing attention to undervalued and recognised experiences and the plurality of ways of inhabiting the urban in the context of the traditionally totalising gaze of Western thought. 

Within this body of work, there is an emerging recognition that concepts, language and words matter - that language does not merely represent but actively produces urban social reality (Hastings, 1999; Fairclough, 2001; St. Pierre 2017), and implicates the users of such language in relative positionalities of valuation viz a viz one another (Angermuller, 2018). In this, the linguistic dominance of English perpetuates epistemic violence. Hence, we see the increasing use of ‘original’ language terms - ‘untranslatables' - within English published texts. This multi-lingual flavouring can be seen both as an act of minor resistance to translational impulses that seeks to explain complex concepts in simple terms, and also simply as a declaration of a lack of adequate linguistic expression within the English corpus, given the genealogies of differentiated linguistic development in various regions, especially those under English colonization. 

We contend, however, that this practice has not been fully theorised within Southern urban theory. Furthermore, there remains a strong tension between the decolonising impulses of Southern urban theory and research practices, and their discursive and textual representations. The relationships between the experiences of everyday living in urban spaces and their forms of representation through words, language and concepts require further interrogation - so that acts of linguistic description (which themselves imply active forms of discursive production) do not constitute new epistemic harms to those communities and groups whose ‘voices’ are intended to be centred, by misrepresenting, misquoting, or mis-producing their reality. This raises some key questions. What kinds of linguistic performances, representations, and productions are embedded, naturalized, and commonsensical (van Dijk, 2008) in English academic texts? What becomes invisibilised in such processes? What harms are rectified or perpetuated through avoiding acts of translation, leaving words or concepts from the field within texts to speak for themselves? When we translate elements, practices and ideas from one place or time to another, are we simply reinforcing the language of the colonisers given the emphasis on English as the working language of the state in many contexts? What are the ramifications of our work for how power and control are mediated by language - the appropriation of urban knowledge through (linguistic) power, and the normalization of particular urban discourses (Richardson, 1996)?

New and emerging scholars influenced by Southern urban theory and a commitment to a decolonial praxis are particularly challenged by these concerns. Language actively reproduces the world whilst discourses shape subject formation, power politics and what gets seen or not seen, included or excluded. Language cannot always capture practices on the ground, yet also has performative value in reshaping power relations through epistemic valorisation or neglect. Words alone cannot fully capture the different urban life-worlds people inhabit, yet focusing only on practice or action undermines the critical role that scholarship can play in impacting the world, and more importantly, the fact that words and worlds are mutually concomitant. Both concepts and actions are required. What do we do when practice on the ground is ‘untranslatable’ yet there remains political value in making certain experiences ‘visible’ within a world in which the dominant language of governing and decision-making elites remains English? When are there adequate synonyms across vernaculars, dialects and languages and when are there not?

Informed by debates on the role of language in identity and subject formation - particularly, the discursive production of urban subjects and objects through various acts of linguistic practice - this call is for participation in an online workshop to theorise the epistemic politics of Southern urban theory through a specific focus on words, language and concepts, as understood performatively rather than simply being representational. 

See here for the original call for proposals

References

Angermuller, J. (2018). Accumulating discursive capital, valuating subject positions. From Marx to Foucault. Critical Discourse Studies. doi:10.1080/17405904.2018.1457551

Hastings, A. (1999). Discourse and Urban Change: Introduction to the Special Issue. Urban Studies, 36(1), 7-12.

Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power (2nd ed.). Harlow, England: Longman Group UK Limited.

Richardson, T. (1996). Foucauldian discourse: power and truth in urban and regional policy making. European Planning Studies, 4(3), 279-292.

St Pierre, Elizabeth Adams (2017). Deleuze and Guattari’s language for new empirical inquiry. Educational Philosophy and Theory 49 (11):1080-1089.

van Dijk, T. A. (2008). Discourse and Context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.